Thorn
The Shepherd, Book III
A Novel by Jeffrey B. Linn
All Rights Reserved

Chapter XIII

"Worthy words," said the Shepherd, "but you are yet beset with a parcel that would crush you." Raising his crook, he drew backward and brought it down gently to touch each shoulder of the prostrate man.

Then, many things occurred in succession. The giant rolled over and, laying with his face to the skies, began to weep. He leapt up and darted about, at times pausing to stare, to gape, to sob, as if the history of his doomed race were cavorting on the palette of his soul. The gathering dawn blackened over and the first gusts of a gale fluttered through. Thorn's sorrow then seemed to invade our party, to encompass us, as if it were misting from the pores of the soil. We were drawn to surround him, communing in imparted grief, until he at the core became a hub: bent, jaws gaping, eyes wide, suffocating in a pit of unrelenting woe. Then something like night passed over his face. It was as if the full weight of the evil that had absorbed him, that he had participated in, rested in his mind's eye, for his countenance bore a pitiful look of utter remorse, the nadir depth of shame.

The Shepherd, alone unmoved by this pestilent affect, stepped to face Thorn. Resting his right hand upon the giant's shoulder, he held his crook aloft and shouted into the storm.

"Today I take this one's place under the sentence of death! And My blood on the dragon's spike pays for his!"

Suddenly I felt a stinging blow to my forehead and, wincing, noted icy orbs dropping from the sky. I glanced anxiously at the gatekeeper, then at Bebaios, hoping they would order us to take cover within, but they stood transfixed.

"Hail Hawthorn, king of Dunatos!" The Shepherd's voice railed against the tempest. "Who reckoned himself as nothing, and has turned to Me! Today I restore the line of Dunatos!"

The wind was churning into a vortex.

I closed my eyes.

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